THRUSH

THRUSH is or was an international criminal organization most often (or at least famously) thwarted or opposed by UNCLE, as chronicled in the television series The Man from UNCLE. Its emblem was a bird (a thrush, of course) in attack mode.

According to fan Dean Dickensheet, the name of the organisation was an acronym for Technological Hiearchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjection of Humanity. Dickensheet's friend and UNCLE spin-off novelist David McDaniel picked up on this idea, and his book The Dagger Affair also strongly hinted that the group emerged from the remnants of Professor Moriarty's criminal organization. McDaniel's book The Rainbow Affair, featuring disguised versions of a number of recognisable fictional characters, involves the attempt by THRUSH to recruit Fu Manchu. References in his concluding novel, The Final Affair, might even go so far as to suggest that Hercules Grytpype-Thynne and Count Moriarty, the recurring villains from the BBC Radio series The Goon Show, had been THRUSH agents.

Given that the television series which chronicled the adventures of those opposed to THRUSH changed the name of that group between pilot and production, it seems likely "THRUSH" is a pseudonym, in which case remains possible this is in fact a different organization known by a separate name altogether such as SPECTRE or the Si-Fan.

An article, The Continuing Crossovers Affair, by Wold Newton scholar Lou Mougin, reviews the links between The Man from UNCLE and other elements into the WNU.